indemnity from Germany of 500,000,000l. would, therefore, be about comparable to the sum paid by France in 1871; and, as the real burden of an indemnity increases more than in proportion to its amount, the payment of 2,000,000,000l. by Germany would have far severer consequences than the 200,000,000l. paid by France in 1871.'

Here evidently is the foundation of what, it is to be feared, will turn out to be a completely erroneous conclusion on the part of Mr Keynes. He compares an estimate of French wealth after the war of 1870 with an estimate of German wealth before the war of 1914-1918. We need not labour the point. Germany to-day, in the condition described by Mr Keynes and depicted for us at first hand in our newspapers, by financiers, business men, and journalists of every colour, is a beggared nation with a bankrupt exchequer. Almost any one, who considers her debt, her paper currency, and her losses in men, will perceive that it would be a far harder task and a far heavier burden for Germany to pay 200 millions in 1920 than it was for France to pay the same amount in 1871.

A few pages later Mr Keynes expresses his moral disapproval of the indemnity of (say) 8000 millions actually imposed, in the following words:

The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness, should be abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilised life of Europe."

If Mr Keynes was right on page 1 in indicting the whole German nation and making it solely responsible for the greatest crime ever committed in the history of civilisation, there are many people who would find nothing 'detestable' in such a punishment; though they would probably agree with him as to its shortsightedness and imprudence, in view of the probable danger and certain damage to ourselves and our Allies. But it is strange that Mr Keynes should limit the economic servitude of Germany to a generation. If he had said that the indemnity scheme of the Peace Treaty would take at least 200 years to carry out, and that his

own would take fifty, he would not have been far wrong. As a matter of fact the Armies of Occupation seem likely to cost the Allies far more in cash than the annual instalments they can hope to extract from Germany for a long time to come.

It is evident, however, from another passage, that Mr Keynes' estimate of Germany's capacity to pay is based not only on this erroneous parallel with the Franco-German indemnity, but also upon the theory (which seems, strangely enough, to have survived the laughter of Moore and the ridicule of Macaulay) that internal debt does not matter, being all in a family way.' The size of the British debt does not seem to trouble him at all. The war has impoverished us, but not seriously,' he remarks cheerfully in another place. It would be pleasant to be able to accept his domestic optimism, and to think with him that there is not the slightest possibility' of a catastrophe in this country. But an economist who holds that the size of the National Debt does not matter, so long as it is borrowed at home, is hardly likely to make a good forecast of the course of events after a war which has multiplied our previously large dead-weight debt by eleven. The truth is that the burden of a debt depends not upon the place where the creditors live but upon the nature of the purposes for which it was contracted. A debt for reproductive purposes borrowed abroad need not be any burden at all; a debt for war borrowed at home must be a burden, unless indeed the enemy can be made to shoulder it. And the evidence which our author has so carefully collected unfortunately strengthens the opinion, now widely held, that our own war-debt is not likely to be much reduced by contributions from Germany.

Art. 14. THE QUESTION OF THE VORARLBERG.

AMONG all the vital problems which Austria has to solve, among all the dangers which menace her existence and her internal peace, among all the political uncertainties with which Europe has to reckon, the aspirations of the people of the Vorarlberg are perhaps the least known but not the least pressing.

First of all, what is the Vorarlberg, and what does it want? The Vorarlberg is a province of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, containing 140,000 inhabitants and situated to the east of the Rhine between Tyrol on one side, and Bavaria and Switzerland on the other. Geographically, the Vorarlberg is part of Switzerland. All its rivers flow towards the west into the Rhine, while it is separated from Tyrol by lofty and almost impassable mountains. The Rhine is a natural frontier only on the map. In reality, it is a purely dynastic and artificial boundary, created in the Middle Ages by a chance division of heritable estates. For the population that dwells on its banks, it is rather a link than a division. Ethnically, Switzerland and the Vorarlberg are inhabited by one people. While the Tyrolese speak a Bavarian dialect, the inhabitants of the Vorarlberg use the Swiss-German dialect, which is very different. Its population is not of German but of Allemanic race, another branch of the great Germanic family, the only exception being that part which is of Romantsch origin and resembles the population of the Engadine. The Vorarlberg was was colonised in the 13th century by immigrants from the mountains of the Valois and the Grisons. Its customs, the names of its villages, and the folk-lore of the country, testify to its close relation with German-speaking Switzerland.

From the economic point of view, the Vorarlberg is identical with Switzerland. Its principal industry, embroidery, connects it closely with the manufacturers of Saint-Gall; its food supplies, as a rule, can come only from the west. Moreover, the Vorarlberg belongs to the Swiss railway system. The economic importance of the

Nous ne sommes pas des Allemands; nous sommes des Allémanes c'est à dire des Suisses' (Speech of Dr Deuring at Feldkirch, Aug. 10, 1919).

Confederacy is chiefly based on the fact that it occupies the point of junction of all the great lines of communication on the Continent. Now, the Vorarlberg is similarly placed on the road which, encircling Helvetic territory to the north and the east, connects Southern Germany with Venetia.

Historically, the links between the two countries go back to the tenth century, to the time when the Convent of Einsiedeln established in the Vorarlberg the Convent of St Gerold, which still belongs to it. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Vorarlberg voluntarily gave itself over to he Swiss and received the soldiers of the Confederacy as liberators. It was in the plain of Frastanz that, near the close of the 15th century, Switzerland definitely won her independence. After this event the district was given in fee by the House of Habsburg to the Swiss who, down to the French Revolution, had the right of military occupation in case of war. In 1798 the Confederacy demanded that it should become formally part of Switzerland, but did not succeed in attaining its object. Nevertheless, the old feeling of comradeship still survived down to the eve of the recent war. At Munich, the Vorarlberg students were members, not of the Austrian Corps but of the Swiss Students' Club; and at Vienna they were in the habit of ironically calling the Vorarlberg the Twentythird Canton.'

It is therefore not surprising if, at the moment when the Monarchy began to dissolve, a great movement of opinion in favour of Switzerland became perceptible in the Vorarlberg. On Nov. 3, 1918, the Diet of the country proclaimed its independence. A petition, which was organised in mid-winter, under most difficult conditions, in a mountainous country covered by snow, received, in a few weeks, the signatures of more than 70 per cent. of the electors. On May 11, 1919, a plebiscite, which was organised by the Government and carried out with complete regularity, showed 47,208 votes for the re-union with Switzerland, as against 11,248. The Vorarlberg deputies who sat in the National Assembly at Vienna, did so only under reservation of the ultimate fate of their country. On Aug. 10, 1919, popular assemblies, held throughout the country, re-affirmed

with great enthusiasm their wish to be separated from Austria and re-united with Switzerland. A week later, two delegates of the Vorarlberg addressed to M. Clemenceau a despatch, in which they declared that their people regarded the Swiss Confederacy as their real mothercountry. It runs as follows:

"The undersigned are persuaded that the Allies, after having destroyed the power of the Hapsburgs in order to emancipate the peoples of the Dual Monarchy, and to secure for them the right of self-determination, will not refuse an audience to the regular delegates of a mountain people which aspires to be free, not in order to escape from the consequences of a war which was decided on without its consent, but from a traditional and henceforward inflexible attachment to independence.'

In spite of this appeal, and against the conclusions of the territorial commission, which desired to leave the people free to decide its own fate, the Peace Conference did not think it necessary to solve or even to discuss the question of the Vorarlberg. There are, however, facts which one may ignore but cannot suppress; and the unanimous will of a people is one of these. This consideration is all the stronger because it appears that the attitude of the Supreme Council was based upon the mistaken notion that the Vorarlberg was indispensable to Austria.

In the face of this movement for union, the attitude of Switzerland has been extremely reserved. Divided by reasons of domestic policy, the Federal Council resolved to refrain from taking the initiative, and so to prove the absolute disinterestedness of the Confederacy. During the summer of 1919, in spite of repeated hints from the Ministers of the Allies, the Swiss Government refused to give any opinion, and thus allowed the favourable opportunity to pass by. Nevertheless, last November, when it appeared that this negative attitude was productive of danger for Switzerland, M. Calonder, President of the Political Department, was induced to make, in the Chamber, an official declaration which stated that, while Switzerland would do nothing to detach the Vorarlberg from Austria, she could not remain indifferent if the Vorarlberg itself obtained recognition of its right to independence.